[% setvar title The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 20030615 %]
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<a name='The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 20030615'></a><h1>The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 20030615</h1>
<p>Welcome to the last Perl 6 Summary of my first year of summarizing. If
I were a better writer (or if I weren't listening with half an ear to
Damian telling YAPC about Perl 6 in case anything's changed) then this
summary might well be a summary of the last year in Perl 6. But I'm
not, so it won't. Instead, I'm going to try and keep it short
(summaries generally take me about 8 hours on an average day, and I
really don't want to lose 8 hours of YAPC thank you very much).</p>
<p>It's getting predictable I know, but we'll start with the internals
list again...</p>
<a name='Class instantiation and creation'></a><h2>Class instantiation and creation</h2>
<p>Dan continued slouching towards full OO and outlined the issues
involved with setting up classes and asked for people's
opinions. People offered them.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=a05210604bb0a8541a403@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[63.120.19.221]</p>
<a name='Writing Language Debuggers'></a><h2>Writing Language Debuggers</h2>
<p>Clinton Pierce wanted to know how to go about writing language level
debuggers in Parrot. (This man is unstoppable I tell you.) He offered
some example code to show what he was trying to do. Benjamin Goldberg
had a style suggestion for the code, but nobody had much to say about
Clint's particular issue.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=5.1.0.14.2.20030610122946.01ff3ca0@mail.geeksalad.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Converting Parrot to continuation passing style'></a><h2>Converting Parrot to continuation passing style</h2>
<p>A lot of this week's effort was involved in getting support for the
Continuation passing style function calling into Parrot. Jonathan
Sillito posted a patch. This lead to a certain amount of confusion
about what needs to be stashed in the continuation and a certain
amount of bemusement about the implications of caller saves rather
than callee saves (in a nutshell, a calling context only has to save
those registers that <i>it</i> cares about; it doesn't have to worry about
saving any other registers, because its callers will already have
saved them if they cared.)</p>
<p>Dan ended up rewriting the calling conventions PDD to take into
account some of the confusion revealed.</p>
<p>I think the upshot of this is that the Parrot core now has everything
we need to support the documented continuation passing calling
conventions. But I could be wrong.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=rt-22633-59206.4.7078149158456@rt.perl.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=a05210600bb0ea82b9e33@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[63.120.19.221]</p>
<a name='Segfaulting IMCC for fun and profit'></a><h2>Segfaulting IMCC for fun and profit</h2>
<p>Clint Pierce's BASIC implementation efforts continue to be one of the
most effective bug hunting (in code and/or docs) efforts the Parrot
team has. This time, Clint managed to segfault IMCC by trying to
declare nested <code>.subs</code> using the wrong sorts of names. Leo
T&ouml;tsch explained how to fix the problem. It seems that fixing
IMCC to stop it segfaulting on this issue is hard, since the segfault
happens at runtime.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=rt-22645-59248.5.99474340192458@rt.perl.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Passing the time'></a><h2>Passing the time</h2>
<p>Clint's BASIC can now place chess! Not very well, but we're in 'dogs
dancing' territory here. Bravo Clint! There was applause.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=5.1.0.14.2.20030611232204.01e42fe8@mail.geeksalad.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Meanwhile in Damian's YAPC address...'></a><h1>Meanwhile in Damian's YAPC address...</h1>
<pre>=item2 New DISPATCH method</pre>
<p>Last week Ziggy worried about multimethod dispatch not being good
enough. This week at YAPC, Damian announced DISPATCH, a scary magic
subroutine which allows you to define your own dispatch
rules. Essentially it gets called before the built in dispatch rules,
beyond that, I know nothing.</p>
<p>Sorry, no link for this.</p>
<a name='Meanwhile in perl6-language'></a><h1>Meanwhile in perl6-language</h1>
<a name='Ziggy's obsoleted thread'></a><h2>Ziggy's obsoleted thread</h2>
<p>Last week I mentioned that Adam Turoff had worried a little about
multimethod dispatch, and wanted to know if it would be possible to
override the dispatch system in an easy way. This week, he outlines
the sorts of things he might want to do.</p>
<p>See above for the resolution. Details don't exist just yet, but we'll
get there.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20030609141349.GB22666@panix.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Type Conversion Matrix, Pragmas (Take 4)'></a><h2>Type Conversion Matrix, Pragmas (Take 4)</h2>
<p>Michael Lazzaro posted the latest version of his Type Conversion
Matrix and asked for comments and hopefully definitive answers. There
was a small about of discussion...</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=53890EF6-9B76-11D7-8800-000A277AA894@cognitivity.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Returning from a nested call'></a><h2>Returning from a nested call</h2>
<p>Whilst idly 'longing for the cleansing joy [of] Perl', Dave Storrs
wondered how/whether he could write a method that would return from
its caller. Answer: Yes, use <code>leave</code>.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20030612150646.G31803@megazone.bigpanda.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='printf like formatting in interpolated strings'></a><h2>printf like formatting in interpolated strings</h2>
<p>Edward Steiner wondered about having some way to to printf like
formatting of numbers in interpolated strings. Luke Palmer (who just
told me he's embarrassed about something I wrote about something he
said last week, but I'd forgotten it) came up with a cool looking
suggestion in response.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=m3he6rfx80.fsf@linux.local' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Acknowledgements, Announcements and Apologies'></a><h1>Acknowledgements, Announcements and Apologies</h1>
<p>Well, that wraps up my first year of summary writing. Thanks to
everyone for reading, it's been fun.</p>
<p>I have one announcement to make: As of next week, there will be no
obligatory reference to Leon Brocard -- I'm getting bored of it, you
all must have been bored with it for months...</p>
<p>If you've appreciated this summary, please consider one or more of the
following options:</p>
<ul>
<li><a name='Send money to the Perl Foundation at donate.perl-foundation.org/ and help support the ongoing development of Perl.'></a>Send money to the Perl Foundation at
<a href='http://donate.perl-foundation.org/' target='_blank'>donate.perl-foundation.org</a> and help support the ongoing
development of Perl.</li>
<li><a name='Get involved in the Perl 6 process. The mailing lists are open to all. dev.perl.org/perl6/ and www.parrotcode.org/ are good starting points with links to the appropriate mailing lists.'></a>Get involved in the Perl 6 process. The mailing lists are open  to
all. <a href='http://dev.perl.org/perl6/' target='_blank'>dev.perl.org</a> and <a href='http://www.parrotcode.org/' target='_blank'>www.parrotcode.org</a>
are good starting points with links to the appropriate mailing lists.</li>
<li><a name='Send feedback, flames, money, photographic and writing commissions, or a nice long US power cable to plug into my Mac power-brick to p<a href='mailto:6summarizer@bofh.org.uk'>6summarizer@bofh.org.uk</a>.'></a>Send feedback, flames, money, photographic and writing commissions, or
a nice long US power cable to plug into my Mac power-brick to
<i><a href='http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?<a href='mailto:p6summarizer@bofh.org.uk'>p6summarizer@bofh.org.uk</a>'>p<a href='mailto:6summarizer@bofh.org.uk'>6summarizer@bofh.org.uk</a></a></i>.</li>
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